MMO-Champion is listing a considerable amount of newly discovered loot from the PTR. Among the drops from the new 5 man (heroic mode) is a new trinket that procs ArP, similar to Grim Toll and Mjolnir Runestone:

Needle-Encrusted Scorpion
Item Level 232
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 114.
Chance on melee or ranged critical strike to increase your armor penetration rating by 452 for 10 sec.

What I find curious about it is the low amount of ArP from the proc, only 452 compared to [Mjolnir Runestone]'s 665. The duration of the proc is the same, 10 seconds. The passive crit rating is only 12 higher than the Runestone's.

This makes me wonder if

a) It's underbudgeted
b) It has a lower ICD than Runestone's 45 sec

If b) is the case and it would turn out to provide an "evened out" amount of ArP appropriate for its iLvl, then it would seem to be the superior choice to Runestone provided one could attain the higher soft cap (1399 - 452 = 947 ArP) - which would be very reasonable for for T9-T10 geared ferals.

Edit: I don't have a char on the PTR nor the opportunity to access it at the moment, otherwise I'd gladly try to test the trinket and present conclusions instead of questions

Chances are that it's underbudgeted but has the exact same mechanics as all the other trinkets. Almost every trinket released so far this expansion has the mechanic of 10 seconds up/45 second CD. I don't see why this would be different. What they wanted, most likely, is to give people access to an arpen trinket without having to run older content that takes forever.

And yes, with the amount of arpen on gear I fully expect this to be better than Mjolnir.

It's really only going to be useful in early gearing up. You can get to 1032 armor pen with the ilvl 264 gear listed on MMO in just the 5 tier slots + cloak/boots/waist (all but 1 of which are bought with badges) and Lupine Longstaff. Even with our 4T10 bonus placing more emphasis on Rake we'll basically be compelled to hard cap armor pen, so I doubt we'll be using any of the armor pen trinkets.

I'm aware of the 45 sec ICD convention which makes me doubt, as you do, that this trinket is any different. However it's striking how much lower the ArP is compared to the lower iLvl Runestone. But then I guess trinkets have a history of being blatantly over- and underbudgeted ([Solace of the Defeated] anyone?)...

However if the ICD is 45 sec I'd disagree that it's better than Runestone except perhaps if you already have 947 passive ArP without gemming for it at all. Even then it's only a gain of 12 Crit.

Edit: Good point Melthu, I hadn't quite added up the numbers to see just how reasonable Arp hard-capping will be in T10.

It's probably not underbudget, since each item have a ratio depending of the slot it take. And with trinkets there is probably 2 ratios, one for de permenent bonus and one for the proc.

To answer the question if this trinket would be the best one : Probably yes except if there is another trinker with Armor pen, or if we can reach the full cap of 1400 without ArPen trinket.

As an exemple each piece of our T10 have ArmorPen. The full T10-251 (normal 10 man) alone give 400 ArmorPen. It's 246 more than the T9-258 (shoulder+head grants 154 ArPen). Since we reached the cap of 735 without difficulty at 3.2, we can expect to gain someting like 200 point if we get the full T10 without counting the off set.

A 10/45 trinket is up roughly 20-25% of the time (counting time-to-proc and first-hit bias for an average fight). So, if crit rating and ArP were equal value near the hard cap, then you'd need roughly 60 more points of ArP during the proc; in other words, Mjolnir is better until you're ~60 ArP away from Scorpion's soft-cap (in other words, roughly 900 ArP).

However, with 4T10 looming, we're going to need to worry a lot more about crit soft caps than ArP caps-- some of those +160 Agi pieces mean we'll be losing crit when we get trinket procs.

With 3.3 I'm pretty sure we're going to be moving towards Agi gemming. Armor Pen will still be a desirable stat, and it will certainly be something we seek out on gear along with high agility and sockets. However, with the introduction of 4T10 allowing Rake tics to crit and less combo points available for Ferocious Bite the value of Agility will rise against the value of Armor Pen.

The number that I think we will all be watching and studiously checking and rechecking numbers on once 3.3 comes out will be the Critical soft cap. I'm also willing to bet the rotation will be more focused purely on the basic rotation and less about trying to include Ferocious Bites in there, but modeling once more gear is available will give us a better idea how many combo points we'll have access too.

Has there been any more testing or confirmation of the latter 4.8% reduction being real?

I agree and I could not help but notice every piece of T10 has ArP on it. 454 ArP if my math is right on the ilvl 264 set, hell the whole set is nice with only red and yellow sockets.

Take in mind few points. Ignoring ArP hard cap doesnt have to be the way to the best DPS afterall. Im pretty sure, that ArP cap will be still a number one priority as it is now and the question is "hard or soft cap". The crit part of AGI value will rise, but AGI itself devalue because of an awfull lot of attack power.
I made "estimated" gear from known pieces, load its stats to Toskk and precisely the super high value of AP (over 14.5k) skyrocketed the value of ArP out of spite rake crits. In Toskk you can trade ArP to whatever you want, but it will be contraproductive to DPS. Neither you cant have 0 ArP in real IC gear. It also reminds, that the point, when ArP beating AGI in a relative DPS value depending on AP. Our 4pc set bonust is just a protector of rake in our rotation and not an alarm to furious geming AGI.
Im ArP fan since Ulduar patch and last nerf made me /sad panda. In IC gear (AT LAST) will be possible to have hard cap. Simulators doesnt care about fight enviroment. ArP focused gear suffer much less from swiching targets and also make swipe very strong. Its just my napkin feelings, but this cannot be simulated or correctly compared unless two ferals in one raid with same skill and luck made few hundreds runs to dungeons. At least, hard ArP make your shred and FB crits so pimped.

You're forgetting that in T10 we will effectively have nothing 'boosting' our rotation. We won't have extra clearcasts, we won't have an extended Rip, and we won't have an extended Savage Roar. Without these things the number of Ferocious Bites we will be able to use will be lower, and we will have to boost our crit rate to compensate.

My statement was actually saying that as we Ferocious Bite less often (down to a minimum of zero) the value of Armor Pen also diminishes, as greater percentages of our damage will be made up by things that do not scale with Armor Pen. And the amount of time we can Ferocious Bite will be lowered by the lack of any rotation assistance on the new tier gear. The emphasis on Agility I'm mentioning is more due to the increased value of crit with Rake capable of critting and higher AP that increases all damage done. And the added bonus of increased crit chance increasing the number of combo points available, simplifying rotation and possibly adding in the occasional Ferocious Bite back into the rotation. If the combo points are available I don't see a point in which removing Ferocious Bite entirely from the rotation, simply because a 5pt FB is more damage per energy then Shred (even with 0/5 FA). Of course if 5 combo points are not available as well as maintaining bleed and buff / debuff uptimes then it is a moot point.

Over 14.5k AP buffed, my bad, that I didnt noticed. Its around 11k AP unbuffed. With 9.5k AP in current Coliseum gear the 11k in IC seems real to me. Especialy if you count 340 AP stacking trinket or ilvl 277 weapon, it shouldnt be hard to imagine such number. Also you can compare current buffed AP, which is over 13k and buffed 14.5k in IC could be estimated.

About not FBing - its your choice. Every spreadsheed, I saw, was for FBing. Its DPS increase out of spite your RiPs falls down - until it falls beyond overal efficiency. Your 5/5 FA and ArP value just determine how much DPS you lose if you are not FBing. If you are sitting on 5 CBP with SR + RiP up, you can clip SR, shred more, refresh fallen rake... its similar DPS lose like you did heroic FB and had problems to refresh RiP. Until the making 5 CBP in our rotation will not be completely random, we will have always a pressure in our DPS cycle. You can trade the pressure of refreshing RiP after FB for the pressure of what the hell I should do with this CBPs. As I said, its your choice.

Geming ArP or AGI doesnt depend on FB in rotation as was said here in my opinion. Its about percentage DPS boost of those stats. If you look closely on IC gear, there are tons of AGI on it (over 2000 AGI unbuffed in my experiment - its also not hard to imagine such number if we have over 1700 AGI in Coliseum gear). How much DPS increase you expect, if you gem more AGI to gear with 2000 AGI and almost 65% unbuffed crit (yes, check crit ratings on those armors)? Without ArP on gear and with sunder and FF the boss armor mitigrates 34.7% physical damage (not bleeds ofc). So 1400 ArP will buff our AA, shred and FB portion of DPS by 34.7% (if RAWR is correct). And this portion even with criting rake still holds over the half of our damage.

This is the strength of ArP. It buff your DPS by the percentage and doesnt mater, if you have 5k DPS or 12k DPS and 9k buffed AP or 15k buffed AP. With stacking AGI, it matter a lot. So if we will have 700-900 pasive ArP on our gear as was presumed here, it will be very unwise to not reach the cap - with, or without proc trinket.

I've been playing around with what ICC gear has been out so far. With some educated guesses, I created 277 gear using a roughly 13% increase in all stats, adding a gem socket in many cases, etc. I then used a tool to give it an ilevel value then tweak it up/down to 277. With what gear has been shown so far, I show hit/expertise/hard armor pen/white crit cap all easily gotten. Gemming was almost purely ArP as the agility on the gear was enough to hit 76% crit buffed/target debuffed, which is over the crit cap. Of course, this is all purely speculation on my part, but its a general idea what type of stats we'll have going forward into ICC.

The question that we need to answer is purely the stat weight of Agility vs the stat weight of Armor Pen. Nobody is saying that Armor Pen will not be valuable. The statement is that the % of damage done by various abilities will change with the availability (or lack of) combo points. Rawr has always overestimated the number of FB in a given time period. It takes all combo points that aren't used for something else and divides that by 5 to determine number done. It's not a simulator. It's a great tool, but not the be all end all. As for Armor Pen affecting over 50% of our damage keep in mind that Agility (in both AP and Critical) will now effect all of our damage and very highly.

Anyway, I have no doubt we will be gathering gear with Armor Pen because it is the best of the 'green' stats (Haste, Critical Rating, etc) and I have no doubt we will be reaching very very high, possibly passively to the cap. Really the question of Agility vs Armor Pen is only important when looking at gemming and looking at trinkets, because on the rest of the gear there really is no reason to make a choice. Solid gear will have both on it.

And looking at what we have seen thus far towards the end of Icecrown I don't think the choice will matter. I think we'll either soft or hard cap both, and we'll be looking at what we need to gem after both stats have been devalued by caps.

Looking at the 25 man T10 gear and the new armor pen pieces, it seems unlikely to reach the Hardcap, even if we get within 200 of it. 1400 is intentionally quite a bit off for druids. The new needle encrusted scorpion trinket seems like it will be a greater proc chance, especally considering its higher item level. Rember the trinkets from MagT when sunwell was relased, best in the game. It will be a trinket to account for the higer levels of armor pen that are static on gear, and with its amount of armor pen on proc, 452, it seems like it will have a 50% more uptime over the runestone. The difference between this trinket and the Runestone, the natural trinket blizz is trying to give to every armor pen class in the game by making this a 5 man trinket, easily obtainable, is to compensate for harder dungeons and a level dps starting platform for progression. The casual code blizzard is embracing.

452 is almost exactly 2/3's of the 665 from the runstone, slightly higher based on a higher item level. This will increase dps based on a higher needed and easily obtainable static armor pen amount, and a uptime of 33% rather than 23%. It is unlikely that a higher item level trinket, so close to this 50% less armor pen value on proc, would not embody an uptime increased simmilar to its depreciation.

I agree that druids will be able to reach hard cap eventually, with hardmode gear, but for the time it takes to obtain that hardcap, I believe there will be the in between phase which this trinket was designed for. I do think you will need the new static armor pen trinket to reach the cap as a druid, if you are going to remain hit and expertise capped however, as much of the armor pen gear you're talking about is very hit and espertise low, replacing those stats with armor pen and haste and crit. Mostly, I was trying to assert the probablility that this new 5 man trinket at item lv 232, has a higher proc rate, to make up for the lower amount of armor pen on proc. And to add dps beyond just having a higher static armor pen. Blizz is lame at times, but not 200 less of a proc lame for higher item level gear.

Ikfirus's Sack of Wonder - Items - Sigrie

That chest piece pretty much solves any issues in regards to hit/expertise. And it'll most likely be what we use along with 4/5 T10 from what I could gather from the items released thus far.

According to my calculations, such item would be budgeted at 232 if it was 114 crit/665 ArP like Runestone; 219 the way it is right now (assuming it uses the same cds as runestone); and it would need to have a 25 sec. internal cooldown to be worth iLvl 232.

Please stop the idle speculation on this trinket, Litte you are making the numbers fit what you want them to and nothing else.

I appreciate the ilvl calculations but read the proc as it is written not how you want it to be.
Chance on melee or ranged critical strike: Needle-Encrusted Scorpion
So it is currently using a different proc to [Grim Toll] or [Mjolnir Runestone], following the spell data link on MMO-C doesn't give a proc chance yet. So unless it gets changed to the same sort of proc we need to wait and see some testing data or more info in the spell data base.

The way it is currently worded would indicate it is using the same type of proc as [Pyrite Infuser], the listed proc rate for this is only 10%.
There is no reason whatsoever to think that it will have a greater uptime than the current trinkets in the game with internal cooldowns.

It's a neat chest item but the T10 chest has Crit and ArPen which we traditionally gem for over hit/expertise. If we weren't foreseeing crit cap problems we'd probably not consider choosing hit/exp over arp/crit.

However, given that we're pretty much certain to run into crit cap issues with ICC gear (if not hard cap then at least soft cap with proc effects such as [Death's Verdict]), it seems the value of hit and expertise will increase. Whereas those stats would formerly convert white misses into white hits, they'd potentially be converting white misses straight into white crits, with our high crit%.

It's interesting how the various caps will complicate our gear choices in ICC... we can't verify the numbers yet as we haven't seen enough iLvl 277 gear, but it seems plausible that cats with mostly 264-277 gear could simultaneously cap Crit, ArPen, Hit and Expertise (!). I guess the only stat they could freely stack at that point would be Attack Power (or Strength if there are free gems slots). I imagine it could potentially make trinket choices awkward, e.g. a "measly iLvl 200" trinket such as [Banner of Victory] could turn out to outperform various trinkets of a much higher iLvl.

As for the Needle-Encrusted Scorpion, it will certainly be a nice "stepping stone" for any feral not already in possession of a Runestone or Grim Toll, but losing value once the crit and arp caps approach.

Edit: Good point Cluey, I honestly overlooked the "critical strike" wording when I originally brought this topic up.

Wowhead PTR Indicated that this is a 30 ICD. So this gives it 50% more uptime then the other 2. (10/30 to 10/45) That makes it better than both GT and MR. Plus it's in 5 man content, which makes it accessible for everyone...